General

A Response to Margaret Lewis by Professor Jaw-perng Wang

[Jaw-perng Wang is Professor of Law at National Taiwan University] I am very impressed that a foreign scholar, especially a common-law trained one, could have a precise picture of Taiwan’s criminal procedure and its history and recent reforms.  Without spending tremendous time and effort, an article that accurately and meticulously reports Taiwan’s criminal procedure, like this one, could not possibly be...

A Response to Margaret Lewis by Nigel Li

[Nigel Li is a prominent lawyer and legal scholar in Taiwan] Professor Lewis' article comes timely as a 10-year review of the half-baked criminal procedure reforms in Taiwan, particularly in a vacuum of rigorous academic attention to an ambitious attempt to transplant the common-law adversarial system to a soil of civil-law inquisitorial adjudication by a rising young democracy seeking a new...

Exploring Diagonals Further: A Response to Professors Ruhl and Sayre

I very much appreciate the thoughtful commentary of Professors J.B. Ruhl and Nathan Sayre on my article.  They are engaged in tremendously interesting thinking on questions of environmental scale and governance, and I find their comments insightful.  I agree with both of them that this article opens further research questions about what diagonals are, how they have been constituted over...

Have we always been diagonal? A response to Osofsky’s “Is Climate Change ‘International’?”

[Nathan Sayre is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California at Berkeley] I join J.B. Ruhl in applauding Hari Osofsky’s effort to bring geographical and legal scholarship into a constructive dialogue to address climate change. Her analysis draws important empirical and theoretical lessons from two case studies by illuminating the complex role of litigation in driving...

From Hierarchy to Diagonality to Panarchy: A Comment on Hari Osofsky’s Is Climate Change “International”?

[J.B. Ruhl is Matthews & Hawkins Professor of Property at Florida State University College of Law] By asking us to think diagonally about institutional frameworks for formulating and implementing responses to climate change, Professor Hari Osofsky challenges law and policy to confront the reality of climate change as a hugely complex multi-scalar phenomenon. The conventional wisdom has been that climate change,...

Grassroots Activism at Its Finest

Koh Wars (Cont’d): A Useful Defense of Koh’s CEDAW Testimony

In the comments section of an earlier post, GW lawprof Edward Swaine raises a really good point in defense of Koh's CEDAW testimony.  Since I highlighted Whelan's very tough post, it is worth highlighting Swaine's very good point in defense (I am paraphrasing, but this is the gist):  In the context of a committee hearing where other folks, including Senator Boxer,...

Ken Starr Endorses Harold Koh

My boss, Dean Ken Starr, has just published this letter expressing warm and hearty support for Harold Koh's nomination to be the State Department Legal Advisor. Here is an excerpt: Harold's background is, of course, the very essence of the American dream. That great story needs no repetition. What I can speak to more personally is Harold Koh...

Due Process

“That the Obama DOJ has repeatedly embraced the very legal theories responsible for much of the intense progressive rage towards the Bush/Cheney regime is now beyond dispute.” So writes Glenn Greenwald on his Salon blog this week entitled “An emerging progressive consensus on Obama's executive power and secrecy abuses.” I take it Glenn’s blog is much read by the “legal left”...

Koh Wars: Koh’s Not-So-Great Testimony in Favor of CEDAW

Ed Whelan's latest post on Koh's nomination to be Legal Advisor lands a sharp and potentially serious blow. Reviewing Koh's writings and his testimony to the Senate in favor of Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, Whelan argues that Koh's testimony deliberately omitted discussion of important interpretations of CEDAW by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women: The...

Where Should Somali Pirates Be Tried?

There has been tons of commentary on the pirate thing now, so there is little more to add.  Except that there is a brewing debate about where to try the remaining captured Somali pirate.  In theory, the pirate could be tried before a military commission, if Obama wished, but I somehow doubt that his going to happen (although if he...